Television ‘Deaths’ Become Morbid Obsession for Berlin Artist

Stephan Tillmans photographs the final flickering images produced by turned-off TVs.

These images may look like the product of hours spent on Photoshop, but they’re actually memento mori of the kind of TV sets your parents (or even grandparents) grew up with.

[partner id=”wireduk”]Retro televisions sparked an interest for Berlin graphic designer Stephan Tillmans after he noticed the brightly colored picture breakdown when certain screens were switched off. After much experimentation with old televisions, Tillmans realized that every old television has its own “death,” and, with enough patience, this could become an intriguing photographic subject.

What started as a happy discovery has turned into a kind of expertise for Tillmans, who explains to Wired.co.uk that “some televisions give better results that others. The TVs I photograph are of different models and sizes.”

Choosing which televisions will provide the right results is somewhat of a fine art, as television deaths that appear photogenic initially may not through a camera lens.

“I am now able to tell whether or not a television has the right potential when I am switching it on and off in a shop,” Tillmans says, “but I have bought a couple of TVs which turned out to be no use, even though they looked promising to the naked eye.”

But selecting the right TVs and wrangling them up to his fourth-floor apartment are just the first steps of Tillman’s laborious photographic process. Insistent that his field of work is about the science of the image and its photography, rather than the technology behind them, Tillmans explains that the pictures are essentially a product of capturing the right moment — even if it takes up to 800 photos to snap the perfect image.

‘I can’t walk past any old television without switching it on and off.’

“The decisive moment is very short,” reveals Tillmans. “There is a certain motion which makes it difficult to achieve a crisp and sharp photo. The effect does not only depend on the exposure and the moment the shutter is released, but also the length of time the TV has been running before it is switched off.”

Added to this precision, Tillmans tries to work as dust-free as possible: “Hair or coarse dust can really destroy a picture because the structures are too fine to retouch anything.” After that, it’s just a case of slightly altering the color levels and attempting to reduce the moiré pattern, although this is “almost impossible.”

Aside from these stunning shots, the project has also left Tillmans with a taste for television-death discovery: “Now I can’t walk past any old television without switching it on and off.”